he
latest promised Iraqi oasis – a constitution that would herald peace and
democracy – has turned out to be just the latest mirage in America’s
bloody trek through the Iraqi desert. But George W. Bush is already
pointing toward the next shimmering image and the Washington
establishment agrees that the nation must press on.

Dramatic alternatives – like finally turning back
and withdrawing U.S. troops – remain out of the question as far as
nearly all major politicians and pundits are concerned. As in the run-up
to war in late 2002 and early 2003, the United States is experiencing a
truncated debate about what to do next in Iraq, often led by the same
debaters.

Typical of this new version of the old imbalanced
debate, NBC’s “Meet
the Press” program on Aug. 28 consisted of two segments: the first
with U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalizad and the second with a panel
of retired U.S. generals.

In the opening segment, Khalizad tried to put the
best face on Iraq’s proposed constitution, which rather than advancing
reconciliation has deepened Iraq’s bitter divisions. The document would
transform Iraq from a secular to an Islamic state and embrace a
federalism that Sunnis say will hand the oil wealth to the Shiites and
Kurds.

But Khalizad told NBC’s Tim Russert that the
constitution represented “a new consensus between the universal
principles of democracy and human rights and Iraqi traditions in Islam.
And in that, it is an agreement, a compact between the various
communities and it sets a new paradigm for this part of the world, a
reconciliation, a consensus between the various forces and tendencies
that are at work here in Iraq.”

Russert did cite dissenting views, including
objections from Iraqi Sunnis, who live primarily in parts of the country
without oil, and protests from women, who complain that the constitution
would strip them of equal rights under the law. But no one advocating
those positions or opposed to a continued U.S. military presence in Iraq
was included on the NBC program.

Military Experts

After Khalizad came the segment with the
ex-generals – Barry McCaffrey, Montgomery Meigs, Wayne Downing and
Wesley Clark. The group offered up a generally positive assessment of
the war’s progress, including warmed-over complaints that the news media
wasn’t reporting enough of the positive developments.

Clark, who briefly sought the Democratic
presidential nomination in 2004, was the most critical of the Bush
administration’s policies, reminding listeners that he was skeptical
about the war before it was launched in 2003. But even Clark rejected
the possibility of a prompt U.S. military withdrawal from the Iraqi
killing fields.

“I still believe there’s an opportunity to make the
best of a bad situation in Iraq,” Clark said. “I don’t want to see us
come out of there if we can put a strategy together that will leave that
region more peaceful and protect our interests and the interests of the
other nations.”

Clark urged stronger U.S. diplomacy with Iraq’s
neighbors, while acknowledging that the Bush administration has shown
little stomach or aptitude for such an initiative. In effect, the former
NATO commander was taking up the Democratic demand that Bush finally
“get Iraq right,” a politically clever positioning to protect the
Democrats from accusations of defeatism but which lets the war go on
indefinitely.

In watching “Meet the Press,” I had a sinking
feeling of déjà vu, a memory of how hawkish ex-generals before the war
had helped marginalize any objections to the invasion by making protests
seem naïve, unmanly and unpatriotic.

While there were a few voices like Clark’s raising
nuanced objections, strong opposition to Bush’s war plans rarely found a
hearing as the major networks and the 24-hour cable news channels
competed to wrap themselves in red-white-and-blue.

Besides some footage of peace demonstrations and a
few clips of anti-war celebrities, the war doubters were almost
invisible, rarely allowed to make their case in any detail. Mostly,
their images served as foils for pro-war pundits to rail against
traitors who were aiding and abetting the terrorists. [For more on how
this media imbalance worked, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Empire
vs. Republic.” For a comprehensive review of how the U.S. got into
this fix, see Robert Parry's “Secrecy
& Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.”]

False Hope

Since the invasion in March 2003, Bush and his
backers have hailed one mirage of false hope after another, from the
toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue, to Bush’s “Mission Accomplished”
speech, to the slaying of Hussein’s two sons, to Hussein’s capture, to
the transfer of “sovereignty,” to last January’s elections – and finally
to the proposed constitution. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Sinking
in Deeper.”]

However, these transient causes for celebration
were overwhelmed by the harsh realities on the ground as the U.S.
invasion and occupation aggravated Iraq’s ethnic tensions and a stubborn
insurgency arose to challenge the Americans militarily.

Also, the war’s chief justification – supposed
Iraqi weapons of mass destruction – turned out to be bogus as did
allegations of Hussein’s collaboration with al-Qaeda. Then, the
disclosure of sexual and other abuses of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison
enflamed anti-Americanism worldwide.

Yet, even as the Iraq War skeptics turned out to be
right and the pro-war pundits were exposed as gullible or worse, the
same Washington dynamic of a pinched debate about Iraq has continued to
apply.

No pro-war columnist has been fired for showing
inadequate skepticism about Bush’s claims. No anti-war thinker has been
added to the op-ed pages of major newspapers to make sure there is more
skepticism now.

Indeed, there has been no appreciable change in
either the make-up or the ideology of the TV pundits. As little
accountability as there was for senior Bush officials for misleading the
country to war, there’s been even less for star journalists who failed
to ask the tough questions. [For more, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Washington
the Unaccountable” or “Bush’s
Nation of Enablers.”]

Media criticism of Bush’s war effort is still
mostly limited to comments about how the war could be fought more
effectively or how the administration needs to sell its case better to
the American people.

Without intended irony, commentators have called on
Bush to “level with” the public – but not about evidence that he “fixed”
the WMD intelligence – instead about how the nation must be prepared to
sacrifice more blood and more money to win in Iraq. [For a satirical
look at a truthful Bush speech, see Consortiumnews.com's “Bush's
Alternative Speech.”]

Today, the major pundits are as confident about the
need to “stay the course” as they were about the undeniable threat from
Iraq’s WMD before the war.

Cindy Sheehan

The talk shows’ favorite target for criticism now
is Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, and the
anti-war activists who have rallied around her. They are deemed crazy or
disloyal for favoring “immediate withdrawal” of U.S. troops from Iraq.
But they rarely get the opportunity to fully explain their thinking.

Though seldom shared with the American people,
there is a rational argument for withdrawal: that a U.S. military
departure would undermine the terrorists by taking away their chief
recruitment pitch while driving a wedge between the foreign jihadists
and Iraqi insurgents, whose interests would stop overlapping once the
U.S. occupation ends. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Iraq
& the Logic of Withdrawal.”]

But the Bush administration continues to confuse
the public by mixing together references to the Sunni-led insurgency and
the non-Iraqi jihadists associated with Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab
Zarqawi – much as the White House did in the pre-war period by
associating Hussein with Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden.

While rallying support for invading Iraq in fall
2002, Bush personally implied that Zarqawi and Hussein were in cahoots
because Zarqawi reportedly got medical treatment in Baghdad in May 2002.

“Some al-Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq,” Bush said
in a key pro-war speech in Cincinnati on Oct. 9, 2002. “These include
one very senior al-Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in
Baghdad this year and who has been associated with planning for chemical
and biological attacks.”

In building the case for war, the White House also exploited another
claim about Zarqawi, that his terrorist group Ansar al-Islam, which was
based in northern Iraq, further proved a connection between Hussein and
Islamic terrorists.

Left out of that assertion, however, was the fact that the Ansar
al-Islam base was in a northern section of Iraq that was outside the
control of Hussein’s government and under the protection of a U.S.
“no-fly zone.”

The Zarqawi Confusion

Still, the residues from those misleading
references to Zarqawi remain part of the administration’s defense of its
Iraq War policies.

At a Pentagon briefing on Aug. 23, 2005, Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld challenged a reporter’s question about whether
Zarqawi was building a base for international terrorism inside Iraq by
stating that “well before the war in Iraq,
well before the U.S. invaded, Zarqawi was in Baghdad.”

The Bush administration also justifies its current
war policies by treating the Sunni-led insurgency and Zarqawi’s foreign
jihadists as one entity.

This formulation clouds the fact that the Sunni-led
insurgency has divergent interests from those of Zarqawi and his
non-Iraqi jihadists. The insurgents are fighting for a narrower set of
objectives, including their claim to Iraq’s oil riches, while the
jihadists are sneaking into Iraq to fight a holy war against Western
infidels.

But rather than looking for ways to split the
insurgents from the jihadists – by withdrawing their common enemy, the
U.S. occupation force – the Bush administration seeks to merge the two
groups in the minds of Americans so any alternative to “staying the
course” can be ruled out on the grounds it would “let Zarqawi win.”

This emotional argument is made easier to pitch to
the American public because the U.S. news media has shown little
interest in delving into details about Iraq or expanding the diversity
of the war debate.

That, in turn, leaves the same government officials
and media commentators – who led America into the Iraqi desert – guiding
the nation on the next leg of the death march toward one more optical
illusion of success.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra
stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His new book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from
Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at
secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at
Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine,
the Press & 'Project Truth.'

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